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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651445">wonder if better now having survived</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/disco_dino/pseuds/disco_dino'>disco_dino</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(can't bring themselves to hate their padawan/master/best friend/brother despite everything), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Gen, Is this angst???, Role Reversal, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, also i am well aware sith obi-wan is unrealistic it's just that it's Fun, like it isn't anywhere near as bad as mustafar but i guess it's a lil pain???, this anakin 🤝 canon obi-wan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:33:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651445</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/disco_dino/pseuds/disco_dino</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Hello, Padawan mine,” Obi-Wan drawls, leaning against the doorframe of the shitty motel room Anakin had mind-tricked the receptionist into giving him. His grin is almost offensively <em>normal,</em> and for a moment — just a moment, but that was long enough — Anakin can almost trick himself into believing that everything was normal, and he could joke and banter with his Master as he usually did, but then Obi-Wan’s eyes glinted gold and the illusion fell apart at Anakin’s feet.</p>
  <p>His hand — the one still made of flesh and blood and not cold, unfeeling machinery — doesn’t shake, despite the mixture of adrenaline and anger and nerves coursing through his veins. Obi-Wan had taught him how to hold his hands steady, and the thought that <em>everything</em> Anakin does will somehow connect back to Obi-Wan — Master, brother, <em>Sith</em> — is an awful one.</p>
</blockquote>or: Obi-Wan is the one who Falls, and Anakin is having a no-good very bad day. This conversation, with his newly-given-a-Sith-name former Master, probably has something to do with that.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>110</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>wonder if better now having survived</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from angel of small death and the codeine scene by hozier. why? because i felt like it</p><p>their characterization feels kinda off to me?? obi-wan specifically But this is practice to get more familiar with the characters anyway and some of that is bc of the au so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hello, Padawan mine,” Obi-Wan drawls, leaning against the doorframe of the shitty motel room Anakin had mind-tricked the receptionist into giving him. His grin is almost offensively <em> normal, </em> and for a moment — just a moment, but that was long enough — Anakin can almost trick himself into believing that everything <em> was </em> normal, and he could joke and banter with his Master as he usually did, but then Obi-Wan’s eyes glinted gold and the illusion fell apart at Anakin’s feet.</p><p>His hand — the one still made of flesh and blood and not cold, unfeeling machinery — doesn’t shake, despite the mixture of adrenaline and anger and nerves coursing through his veins. Obi-Wan had taught him how to hold his hands steady, and the thought that <em> everything </em> Anakin does will somehow connect back to Obi-Wan — Master, brother, <em> Sith </em> — is an awful one.</p><p>“Darth Lumis,” he returns, voice somehow steady despite it all — yet <em> another </em> thing Obi-Wan had taught him — and somehow it manages to break his already-shattered heart even more, that his brother in all but blood is a named Sith. That the person who answered to Obi-Wan is dead and gone and six feet under for all that his body still walks. That a decade spent being Master and Padawan, half of another spent being called Kenobi-and-Skywalker, never one without the other, has led  them <em> here</em>, with Obi-Wan’s eyes glowing gold and his lightsaber bloody crimson and Anakin wanting to flee at the smooth lilt of Obi-Wan’s Coruscanti accent.</p><p>Obi-Wan’s lips tug downward in displeasure, and it makes Anakin want to <em> scream </em> with the fond memories the action digs up. How dare he. How dare he destroy Anakin’s world in one horrible day, and then show up the next as though everything’s the same when nothing is? “Don’t call me that,” he says, sharp with discomfort, and Anakin’s hand twitches for his lightsaber. </p><p>Anakin swallows. “Why not?” he asks, cataloguing the exits. There’s only one, and Obi-Wan’s right in front of it. The wall isn’t anywhere near thick enough to stop Anakin from cutting out an escape if need be, though, and Anakin tucks the idea into the back of his mind as a last resort. He can't go around needlessly destroying people's property, after all, no matter how much better off it'd be if it were demolished and then rebuilt from scratch. “You kneeled in front of Palp — <em> Sidious </em> and rose when he told Darth Lumis to rise, so why shouldn’t I call you the name you’ve accepted as your own?”</p><p>“Not to you,” Obi-Wan says fiercely. “Never to you. Darth Lumis is for people who don’t know me, who fear me. Who I couldn’t care less about.”</p><p>His lightsaber isn’t out. Anakin almost wishes it was, as sick as the thought of battling Obi-Wan and not having it be a spar makes him, because Anakin’s always been better at dueling than holding conversation — much less conversation with someone he’s so conflicted over. </p><p>“Perfect for me, then,” Anakin huffs, no amusement in it, and flashes Obi-Wan a grin that’s more akin to a baring of his teeth than anything.</p><p>“You know me better than anyone,” Obi-Wan says, expression something like pained, and Anakin’s chest pulses with something like sadness, with something like anger, with something like a black hole that threatens to swallow him whole.</p><p>“No, I don’t,” Anakin snaps. He doesn’t know this Obi-Wan, with gold eyes and a lightsaber he used to cut down younglings. He knows the Obi-Wan who loved tea but didn’t finish his cups of it more often than not, the Obi-Wan who patiently taught him how to swim when he was nine and fucking <em> terrified</em>, the Obi-Wan who nearly flung Anakin out a window when he shot up to the same height as him when he was sixteen, then had the audacity to grow an inch taller a year later. “The Obi-Wan I know — <em> knew </em> —  was the best Jedi in the entire order. He was my best friend, my brother in every way that mattered. His eyes were blue and bright and <em> kind</em>, not yellow and cruel and uncaring. Besides, I don’t fit the ‘people you care about’ bill, now do I.”</p><p>“I care about you more than anyone,” Obi-Wan insists.</p><p>Anakin snorts. Obi-Wan’s words make something inside his chest ache with everything that was.</p><p>With everything that could have been.</p><p>“Funny way of showing it,” he says. “I would’ve preferred you to get me the newest ship to improve for fun, not pledge yourself to the person who marched on the Jedi Temple and then personally kill the younglings yourself, but they <em> are </em> easy to mix up, I get it.”</p><p>“The Jedi were <em> weak</em>,” Obi-Wan spits, eyes glowing brighter when he says it. “They were holding me back — they were holding <em> you </em> back.”</p><p>The vitriol with which he says it makes something in Anakin crack, oozing pain and regret and disbelief. “You loved the Jedi,” Anakin says, softly, quietly, and he <em> knows </em> his pain is painted in broad strokes along his face but he can’t bring himself to care, because he feels like he’s going to shatter.</p><p>“I loved <em> you, </em> ” Obi-Wan corrects. “I still love you.”</p><p>“I <em> hate </em> you,” Anakin says, numbly, and he wishes that he can’t taste the lie, that they can’t both hear it ring false in the Force, that even after Obi-Wan committed atrocities no sane person would ever forgive him for Anakin still can’t find it in himself to hate him.</p><p>All he has left is his pain, and his sadness, and his heartbreak, and this unbearable ache like a gaping cavity in the middle of his chest, and there's no space for him to hate Obi-Wan in there but there is <em>more</em> than enough for him to ache for Obi-Wan by his side. He feels like someone peeled his layers back and scraped him raw and open and left him off-center and stumbling blind without Obi-Wan by his side, without Obi-Wan and his blue eyes and his sarcastic quips and his insufferably 'civilized' taste in everything, without Obi-Wan whose eyes didn’t shine yellow and saber didn’t glow crimson and didn’t stand in the doorways of crappy motels that Anakin mind-tricked his way into and crook his smile cruelly.</p><p>“You love me.” Obi-Wan says it simply, like the fact that they both know it is, and <em> that </em> is what makes Anakin’s composure — painstakingly taught by Obi-Wan, of course — crack, because nothing hits quite as hard as the truth does.</p><p>Anakin breathes in. Out. Straightens his shoulders, raises his chin, makes himself meet Obi-Wan’s yellow eyes for the first time this entire conversation despite the tears welling up in his own.</p><p>“Yes,” he agrees, sadly, because there’s no point in denying it when it rang truer than Anakin’s hollow “I hate you” had, and then rams his lightsaber through the wall, flings himself through the crumbling wood, and leaves Anakin Skywalker, who loved Obi-Wan Kenobi more than he loved himself, behind.</p><p>Ekkreth, stitched together from the shattered remains of Anakin Skywalker and held together at the seams with a thread close to fraying, is the one who leaves that motel. <em>Anakin</em> <em>Skywalker</em> is not someone he can bear to be anymore.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>why did obi-wan become a sith, you ask. why does obi-wan hate the jedi, you ask. why aren't they even on mustafar, you ask. i have no idea, i respond.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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